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Materia Medica, Pharmacy and Therapeutics; Including the Physiological Action of Drugs, the Special Therapeutics of Disease, Official and Practical Pharmacy, Minute Directions for Prescription Writing and Avoiding Incompatibility, Also

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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906 edition. Excerpt: ...of acting similarly to the living germs. Haffkine cultivates the spirilla in bouillon and then kills them by the application of heat, without destroying the toxic material which adheres to their bodies. The inoculation of human subjects with this product is followed by severe reaction, both local and general, and is believed to cause the production of a protective principle in the blood-serum. A preliminary inoculation is made with a weak virus, which produces a mild reaction, and after five or six days a more virulent preparation is injected, the reaction subsiding in another five days, when the subject is believed to be protected. In 42,445 such inoculations no mishap or injury to health resulted, and the British medical officers who were assigned to the duty of verifying the effects report that these were highly favorable, and that the statistics demonstrate for this method a remarkably protective power against Asiatic cholera in a country where the disease is endemic. Plague Sera have been extensively used in recent epidemics of that disease, and although the commissions sent to India from England, Germany and Russia reported unfavorably upon the results obtained by them, the experience of individual observers indicates a decided, though as yet indefinite value for the serum-therapy of bubonic plague. The curative sera seem to have but slight influence on the mortality-rate in virulent epidemics, but in mild ones they exert a marked beneficial influence. The preventive inoculations have been more successful, and in some localities have practically eradicated the disease. Haffkine's protective serum is a toxin preparation, obtained by the same method as his cholera serum, and employed by a similar manner of administration, two injections being...show more